Weird this is, we actually took this photo off Paul Kix's MySpace page...

Before we left last week, we mentioned that Dallas Morning News Points editor Rod Dreher had posted to Beliefnet a column about Julie Lyons' much-commented-upon Bible Girl column from Thursday. Dreher came back to it over the weekend; he wasn't the only one.

But Dreher's is the one we'll focus on for the time being, since toward the end of his piece he mentioned that our friends at D mag's FrontBurner blog posted "some expected commentary about how Lyons must be a self-hating closet case and so forth" Friday. "But," Dreher noted, "I really liked what the magazine's publisher, Wick Allison, a conservative who is very comfortable with and friendly to gays (you'd have to be to go to his parish) had to say in response," and then he quoted Allison's posting, which you can read here.

Well, Bible Girl has sent to FrontBurner's Tim Rogers her own response to D's writers, who have offered myriad opinions concerning the boss' faith and sexuality. We are including it on Unfair Park after the jump. --Robert Wilonsky

From: Julie Lyons
To: Tim Rogers

Well, FBvians (did I spell that right?), what can I say? You've touched on a lot of aspects of this debate concerning sexual orientation, and mostly thoughtfully. Let me address just a few things.

First of all, thank you, Wick, for your gracious words. People have a hard time grasping that faith can be the driving force in a person's life. I sure wish the secular media would try a little harder to understand that.

Why do I work at the Dallas Observer--and under the umbrella of its parent company, Village Voice Media--which runs quite a few ads that I consider offensive to my faith? Three things about Village Voice Media: 1. Journalistic integrity. 2. Editorial freedom (way more than I had when I worked at dailies). 3. The opportunity to work with an incredibly talented, diverse staff of writers, reporters, editors and designers.

The Dallas Observer is a paper of many perspectives, and that's something I love about it. We aren't always predictable, and many publications are. There is a place for my perspective, and there is a place for others'--as long as they're expressed and argued well. I do have a beef with the alternative press in general--in many cases, they are predictable. But there are so many things the alternative press does brilliantly, in the context of all news media: investigative reporting, in-depth feature writing, great columns, outstanding coverage of the arts. So I'll take the good with the bad. Not always happily, but recognizing that I DON'T OWN THE PAPER. I'm helping carry out Village Voice Media's overall journalistic vision, and you know what? It's a good one.

As for Paul Kix's post, well, I respect Paul as the superb writer he is, but think about something here (that Tim Rogers alluded to). Last week when hostile comments starting flowing in to Unfair Park concerning Bible Girl, my husband--who's known me for 22 years, by the way--wrote a very eloquent response...defending his wife. I advised him not to post it, touched as I was by his concern for me. He ultimately made his own decision not to post. I told him this: Don't waste your breath on people who are unwilling to challenge their own prejudices, regardless of what you say and what you've gone through.

One last and very small point: I am not a fundamentalist. I am an evangelical and a Pentecostal. Because of the latter, most fundamentalists would not have me.

Julie

Bonus Video: What Makes Bible Girl Laugh